Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (720 page)

“Tell me directly you see any land, Serang.”

“Yes, Tuan. Not yet.”

“No, not yet,” Captain Whalley would agree.

The ship had been the best friend of his decline. He had sent all the money he had made by and in the Sofala to his daughter. His thought lingered on the name. How often he and his wife had talked over the cot of the child in the big stern-cabin of the Condor; she would grow up, she would marry, she would love them, they would live near her and look at her happiness — it would go on without end. Well, his wife was dead, to the child he had given all he had to give; he wished he could come near her, see her, see her face once, live in the sound of her voice, that could make the darkness of the living grave ready for him supportable. He had been starved of love too long. He imagined her tenderness.

The Serang had been peering forward, and now and then glancing at the chair. He fidgeted restlessly, and suddenly burst out close to Captain Whalley —

“Tuan, do you see anything of the land?”

The alarmed voice brought Captain Whalley to his feet at once. He! See! And at the question, the curse of his blindness seemed to fall on him with a hundredfold force.

“What’s the time?” he cried.

“Half-past three, Tuan.”

“We are close. You must see. Look, I say. Look.”

Mr. Massy, awakened by the sudden sound of talking from a short doze on the lowest step, wondered why he was there. Ah! A faintness came over him. It is one thing to sow the seed of an accident and another to see the monstrous fruit hanging over your head ready to fall in the sound of agitated voices.

“There’s no danger,” he muttered thickly.

The horror of incertitude had seized upon Captain Whalley, the miserable mistrust of men, of things — of the very earth. He had steered that very course thirty-six times by the same compass — if anything was certain in this world it was its absolute, unerring correctness. Then what had happened? Did the Serang lie? Why lie? Why? Was he going blind too?

“Is there a mist? Look low on the water. Low down, I say.”

“Tuan, there’s no mist. See for yourself.”

Captain Whalley steadied the trembling of his limbs by an effort. Should he stop the engines at once and give himself away. A gust of irresolution swayed all sorts of bizarre notions in his mind. The unusual had come, and he was not fit to deal with it. In this passage of inexpressible anguish he saw her face — the face of a young girl — with an amazing strength of illusion. No, he must not give himself away after having gone so far for her sake. “You steered the course? You made it? Speak the truth.”

“Ya, Tuan. On the course now. Look.”

Captain Whalley strode to the binnacle, which to him made such a dim spot of light in an infinity of shapeless shadow. By bending his face right down to the glass he had been able before . . .

Having to stoop so low, he put out, instinctively, his arm to where he knew there was a stanchion to steady himself against. His hand closed on something that was not wood but cloth. The slight pull adding to the weight, the loop broke, and Mr. Massy’s coat falling, struck the deck heavily with a dull thump, accompanied by a lot of clicks.

“What’s this?”

Captain Whalley fell on his knees, with groping hands extended in a frank gesture of blindness. They trembled, these hands feeling for the truth. He saw it. Iron near the compass. Wrong course. Wreck her! His ship. Oh no. Not that.

“Jump and stop her!” he roared out in a voice not his own.

He ran himself — hands forward, a blind man, and while the clanging of the gong echoed still all over the ship, she seemed to butt full tilt into the side of a mountain.

It was low water along the north side of the strait. Mr. Massy had not reckoned on that. Instead of running aground for half her length, the Sofala butted the sheer ridge of a stone reef which would have been awash at high water. This made the shock absolutely terrific. Everybody in the ship that was standing was thrown down headlong: the shaken rigging made a great rattling to the very trucks. All the lights went out: several chain-guys, snapping, clattered against the funnel: there were crashes, pings of parted wire-rope, splintering sounds, loud cracks, the masthead lamp flew over the bows, and all the doors about the deck began to bang heavily. Then, after having hit, she rebounded, hit the second time the very same spot like a battering-ram. This completed the havoc: the funnel, with all the guys gone, fell over with a hollow sound of thunder, smashing the wheel to bits, crushing the frame of the awnings, breaking the lockers, filling the bridge with a mass of splinters, sticks, and broken wood. Captain Whalley picked himself up and stood knee-deep in wreckage, torn, bleeding, knowing the nature of the danger he had escaped mostly by the sound, and holding Mr. Massy’s coat in his arms.

By this time Sterne (he had been flung out of his bunk) had set the engines astern. They worked for a few turns, then a voice bawled out, “Get out of the damned engine-room, Jack!” — and they stopped; but the ship had gone clear of the reef and lay still, with a heavy cloud of steam issuing from the broken deckpipes, and vanishing in wispy shapes into the night. Notwithstanding the suddenness of the disaster there was no shouting, as if the very violence of the shock had half-stunned the shadowy lot of people swaying here and there about her decks. The voice of the Serang pronounced distinctly above the confused murmurs —

“Eight fathom.” He had heaved the lead.

Mr. Sterne cried out next in a strained pitch —

“Where the devil has she got to? Where are we?”

Captain Whalley replied in a calm bass —

“Amongst the reefs to the eastward.”

“You know it, sir? Then she will never get out again.”

“She will be sunk in five minutes. Boats, Sterne. Even one will save you all in this calm.”

The Chinaman stokers went in a disorderly rush for the port boats. Nobody tried to check them. The Malays, after a moment of confusion, became quiet, and Mr. Sterne showed a good countenance. Captain Whalley had not moved. His thoughts were darker than this night in which he had lost his first ship.

“He made me lose a ship.”

Another tall figure standing before him amongst the litter of the smash on the bridge whispered insanely —

“Say nothing of it.”

Massy stumbled closer. Captain Whalley heard the chattering of his teeth.

“I have the coat.”

“Throw it down and come along,” urged the chattering voice. “B-b-b-b-boat!”

“You will get fifteen years for this.”

Mr. Massy had lost his voice. His speech was a mere dry rustling in his throat.

“Have mercy!”

“Had you any when you made me lose my ship? Mr. Massy, you shall get fifteen years for this!”

“I wanted money! Money! My own money! I will give you some money. Take half of it. You love money yourself.”

“There’s a justice . . .”

Massy made an awful effort, and in a strange, half choked utterance —

“You blind devil! It’s you that drove me to it.”

Captain Whalley, hugging the coat to his breast, made no sound. The light had ebbed for ever from the world — let everything go. But this man should not escape scot-free.

Sterne’s voice commanded —

“Lower away!”

The blocks rattled.

“Now then,” he cried, “over with you. This way. You, Jack, here. Mr. Massy! Mr. Massy! Captain! Quick, sir! Let’s get —

“I shall go to prison for trying to cheat the insurance, but you’ll get exposed; you, honest man, who has been cheating me. You are poor. Aren’t you? You’ve nothing but the five hundred pounds. Well, you have nothing at all now. The ship’s lost, and the insurance won’t be paid.”

Captain Whalley did not move. True! Ivy’s money! Gone in this wreck. Again he had a flash of insight. He was indeed at the end of his tether.

Urgent voices cried out together alongside. Massy did not seem able to tear himself away from the bridge. He chattered and hissed despairingly —

“Give it up to me! Give it up!”

“No,” said Captain Whalley; “I could not give it up. You had better go. Don’t wait, man, if you want to live. She’s settling down by the head fast. No; I shall keep it, but I shall stay on board.”

Massy did not seem to understand; but the love of life, awakened suddenly, drove him away from the bridge.

Captain Whalley laid the coat down, and stumbled amongst the heaps of wreckage to the side.

“Is Mr. Massy in with you?” he called out into the night.

Sterne from the boat shouted —

“Yes; we’ve got him. Come along, sir. It’s madness to stay longer.”

Captain Whalley felt along the rail carefully, and, without a word, cast off the painter. They were expecting him still down there. They were waiting, till a voice suddenly exclaimed —

“We are adrift! Shove off!”

“Captain Whalley! Leap! . . . pull up a little . . . leap! You can swim.”

In that old heart, in that vigorous body, there was, that nothing should be wanting, a horror of death that apparently could not be overcome by the horror of blindness. But after all, for Ivy he had carried his point, walking in his darkness to the very verge of a crime. God had not listened to his prayers. The light had finished ebbing out of the world; not a glimmer. It was a dark waste; but it was unseemly that a Whalley who had gone so far to carry a point should continue to live. He must pay the price.

“Leap as far as you can, sir; we will pick you up.”

They did not hear him answer. But their shouting seemed to remind him of something. He groped his way back, and sought for Mr. Massy’s coat. He could swim indeed; people sucked down by the whirlpool of a sinking ship do come up sometimes to the surface, and it was unseemly that a Whalley, who had made up his mind to die, should be beguiled by chance into a struggle. He would put all these pieces of iron into his own pockets.

They, looking from the boat, saw the Sofala, a black mass upon a black sea, lying still at an appalling cant. No sound came from her. Then, with a great bizarre shuffling noise, as if the boilers had broken through the bulkheads, and with a faint muffled detonation, where the ship had been there appeared for a moment something standing upright and narrow, like a rock out of the sea. Then that too disappeared.

When the Sofala failed to come back to Batu Beru at the proper time, Mr. Van Wyk understood at once that he would never see her any more. But he did not know what had happened till some months afterwards, when, in a native craft lent him by his Sultan, he had made his way to the Sofala’s port of registry, where already her existence and the official inquiry into her loss was beginning to be forgotten.

It had not been a very remarkable or interesting case, except for the fact that the captain had gone down with his sinking ship. It was the only life lost; and Mr. Van Wyk would not have been able to learn any details had it not been for Sterne, whom he met one day on the quay near the bridge over the creek, almost on the very spot where Captain Whalley, to preserve his daughter’s five hundred pounds intact, had turned to get a sampan which would take him on board the Sofala.

From afar Mr. Van Wyk saw Sterne blink straight at him and raise his hand to his hat. They drew into the shade of a building (it was a bank), and the mate related how the boat with the crew got into Pangu Bay about six hours after the accident, and how they had lived for a fortnight in a state of destitution before they found an opportunity to get away from that beastly place. The inquiry had exonerated everybody from all blame. The loss of the ship was put down to an unusual set of the current. Indeed, it could not have been anything else: there was no other way to account for the ship being set seven miles to the eastward of her position during the middle watch.

“A piece of bad luck for me, sir.”

Sterne passed his tongue on his lips, and glanced aside. “I lost the advantage of being employed by you, sir. I can never be sorry enough. But here it is: one man’s poison, another man’s meat. This could not have been handier for Mr. Massy if he had arranged that shipwreck himself. The most timely total loss I’ve ever heard of.”

“What became of that Massy?” asked Mr. Van Wyk.

“He, sir? Ha! ha! He would keep on telling me that he meant to buy another ship; but as soon as he had the money in his pocket he cleared out for Manilla by mail-boat early in the morning. I gave him chase right aboard, and he told me then he was going to make his fortune dead sure in Manilla. I could go to the devil for all he cared. And yet he as good as promised to give me the command if I didn’t talk too much.”

“You never said anything . . .” Mr. Van Wyk began.

“Not I, sir. Why should I? I mean to get on, but the dead aren’t in my way,” said Sterne. His eyelids were beating rapidly, then drooped for an instant. “Besides, sir, it would have been an awkward business. You made me hold my tongue just a bit too long.”

“Do you know how it was that Captain Whalley remained on board? Did he really refuse to leave? Come now! Or was it perhaps an accidental . . .?”

“Nothing!” Sterne interrupted with energy. “I tell you I yelled for him to leap overboard. He simply must have cast off the painter of the boat himself. We all yelled to him — that is, Jack and I. He wouldn’t even answer us. The ship was as silent as a grave to the last. Then the boilers fetched away, and down she went. Accident! Not it! The game was up, sir, I tell you.”

This was all that Sterne had to say.

Mr. Van Wyk had been of course made the guest of the club for a fortnight, and it was there that he met the lawyer in whose office had been signed the agreement between Massy and Captain Whalley.

“Extraordinary old man,” he said. “He came into my office from nowhere in particular as you may say, with his five hundred pounds to place, and that engineer fellow following him anxiously. And now he is gone out a little inexplicably, just as he came. I could never understand him quite. There was no mystery at all about that Massy, eh? I wonder whether Whalley refused to leave the ship. It would have been foolish. He was blameless, as the court found.”

Mr. Van Wyk had known him well, he said, and he could not believe in suicide. Such an act would not have been in character with what he knew of the man.